Company leader
Mike Kijewski
Founder and CEO
MedCrypt
Mike Kijewski is founder and chief executive of MedCrypt. MedCrypt sells cybersecurity products to companies that make medical devices. Those products include a software bill of materials and vulnerability tracking, plus encryption and device monitoring, so a manufacturer can see what code sits on a pacemaker or an imaging system and can protect the data that device sends.
Early life
He earned a bachelor's degree in physics at West Chester University and taught high school physics for three years in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, a town about an hour west of Philadelphia. He then analyzed the radiation safety of oncology treatment machines in hospitals. He earned a master's degree in medical physics at the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA at the Wharton School.
Business
During graduate school he started Gamma Basics, software to make that radiation-safety testing easier. Varian Medical Systems, a large radiation-oncology company, became a customer and bought Gamma Basics in 2013. He stayed as a product manager for Varian's cloud-based quality-assurance systems in radiation oncology. He has reviewed or consulted on the cryptography setup of more than 40 medical devices.
He started MedCrypt in San Diego, California, in January 2016. Once he looked into device security, he found an attack on a networked device was possible, and most devices lacked basic security technology. The idea was software on the device that watched its behavior and told the manufacturer when something looked wrong.
The San Diego Business Journal named him to a 40 Under 40 list in 2021.